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Galeon at a glance

One of the most popular uses of the Internet is plain old browsing. The World Wide Web has been around for over a decade now and the number of new Websites continues to grow. The Web has grown from the `text only' days of browsers like lynx to the GUI-based `point and click' browsers like Netscape that display Websites in text, images and often sound.

Netscape went on to gain an incredible amount of popularity and remains one of the most popular GUI browsers around. Available on several major platforms including Linux, it continues to have a substantial fan following. After releasing Netscape 4 Communicator the company began working on its successor, Netscape 5. The source code of that eventually was thrown open and formed a part of the Mozilla project.

The Mozilla project developed the Gecko engine, a browser engine that would power the next generation of Netscape browsers. Mozilla evolved into a fairly complete product and finally nearly 3 years after the release of Netscape 4, Netscape released an upgrade, Netscape 6. Based on Mozilla code and equipped with the powerful Gecko engine, it was a compelling new browser. However there were some problems. The Gecko engine was used to power not only page rendering but also the browser interface. While Gecko is a great rendering engine, on older computers it does not always make the best of interface engines. Simply moving around the menus can be an exercise in patience. Enter Galeon.

About Galeon

Galeon is based on two classic philosophies: "Do one thing and do it well" and "Don't re-invent the wheel". Unlike Mozilla or Netscape, Galeon is just a browser and not an Internet suite. With an interface built with GTK and the Gecko browsing engine, it truly combines the best of both the worlds--a light interface and a fast browser. Since they don't bother with re-inventing the wheel, i.e. writing a page-rendering engine, they have been able to come with an extremely attractive alternative to Netscape/Mozilla. As they use the highly standards compliant and developed Gecko engine, Galeon can view sites in all their glory, something which can't always be said for the alternative browsers out there.